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Calif. Community Choice Aggregator MCE Looks to be First to Own Generation Resources

January 31, 2023

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
January 31, 2023

California community choice aggregator MCE is taking the first step toward pursuing full or partial ownership in turnkey clean energy projects and is using a request for information process to solicit these projects.

If any projects are selected through this process, MCE would become the first California community choice provider to have full or partial ownership in their power plants, it said on Jan. 25.

MCE is seeking projects that are:

All projects submitted for review must be fully operational or ready for construction and be submitted for consideration to MCE by March 3, 2023.

Proposals can be submitted on MCE’s website and must include all proposal components as outlined in the Request for Information.

Serving a 1,200-megawatt peak load, MCE provides electricity service and programs to more than 575,000 customer accounts and 1.5 million residents and businesses in 37 communities across four Bay Area counties: Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, and Solano.

The American Public Power Association has initiated a new category of membership for community choice aggregation programs.

APPA’s Waterhouse Underscores Threat to Reliability With Transformer Supply Chain Challenges

January 30, 2023

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
January 30, 2023

Desmarie Waterhouse, Senior Vice President of Advocacy and Communications and General Counsel at the American Public Power Association, on Jan. 26 underscored the ongoing threat to grid reliability due to ongoing distribution transformer supply chain challenges.

She made her comments at the U.S. Energy Association’s 19th Annual State of the Energy Industry Forum in Washington, D.C.

“There has been a significant supply chain problem for distribution transformers,” Waterhouse said, noting that most distribution transformers are made in the U.S.

“We have been hearing now from our members for over a year about their very serious concerns that they’re going to run out of their stocks of distribution transformers. It used to typically take about three months from when you would place an order for transformers to when you’d get them delivered and now it’s well over a year,” she said.

In addition, “we’ve got members that are being told by manufacturers – we can’t even meet your order, or we don’t even know when we’ll have it ready for you – and that’s a pretty significant concern,” Waterhouse said.

“There’s been a lot of talk about reliability of the electric system – well, this is going to have an impact on reliability for distribution utilities,” she added.

“We had a major hurricane last year. Fortunately, there weren’t other hurricanes, but I’ve talked to my members in Florida pretty extensively” and those utilities are “incredibly concerned. Obviously, we’re still in the winter. There could be additional winter storms.”

APPA member utilities have told the association that they are very worried that they will not have the transformers that they need if there is a storm or some other event.

“I’ve also heard from my members that are in parts of the country where there’s a lot of growth, particularly in areas where there’s a big demand for housing,” she said. Those utilities are having to “go back to those who are constructing homes and other facilities that those projects are going to have to be delayed for pretty extensive periods of time because they can’t get access to the distribution transformers that they need.”

APPA has been working collaboratively with the Edison Electric Institute, the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association and the Department of Energy “trying to talk through what can be done.”

President Biden previously announced plans to use the Defense Production Act and one of the particular items listed was distribution transformers “but so far there hasn’t been any concrete action taken by the administration under the DPA to do anything in this space,” Waterhouse said.

“We’re just one storm away for this potentially being a problem,” she said.

APPA is disappointed that the DOE in late December put forth a proposal to increase the energy efficiency standards for distribution transformers, Waterhouse said.

This is not “really the right time to do that. We already have an issue with supply and looking to increase those efficiency standards isn’t sending the right signal to the manufacturers about them ramping up production if what’s going to happen from that energy efficiency standard would actually change that production process considerably.”

Inflation Reduction Act Provision is a “Game Changer”

The Inflation Reduction Act, “for the first time, public power utilities are going to get access to various energy tax credits, and this is through the direct pay provisions of the IRA,” Waterhouse told the attendees at the event.

“I can’t stress enough for you what a game changer this is for our members,” she said. “We have not been able to have access to the production tax credit or the investment tax credit because our members are not-for-profit,” which has forced APPA members “that want to make investments in non-hydropower renewables to enter into power purchase agreements and they might only get a small portion of that tax credit passed through to them,” which makes those investments more expensive.

With respect to the IRA, Waterhouse said that APPA is keeping a close watch on how fast the U.S. Treasury Department will implement its guidance related to the law.

“What we really want from Treasury is for them to make this process as easy and simple as possible for our members,” she said.

Waterhouse also noted that for APPA members that decide not to make a direct renewable energy investment but choose instead to go with a power purchase agreement, direct pay will give them the ability to “get a better deal if they do want to do a power purchase agreement.”

As for the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, “We were particularly pleased when that was enacted into law,” Waterhouse said, noting that “there are a lot of funding opportunities in this law that are really going to benefit our members. These include the provisions for cybersecurity, grid resiliency, broadband, electric vehicle and hydrogen vehicle infrastructure, energy efficiency and” Department of Energy research, development and deployment of energy technologies.

Permitting Reform

Waterhouse also said that APPA supports common sense reforms to the energy permitting process, which includes getting needed pipeline infrastructure built for natural gas and electric transmission lines.

There is also a need for hydropower facility licensing and relicensing reform, she said, noting that a number of public power utilities receive generation supplies from hydropower. The permitting process for hydropower facilities “has been cumbersome,” she said.

Waterhouse said that APPA is hopeful that because Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) is now Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, there is a chance that something meaningful could be done with respect to licensing and relicensing reform.

The lawmaker has sponsored legislation in the past that would streamline hydropower relicensing processes in the U.S.

Clean Power Alliance Seeking Solar-Plus-Storage Offers in Southern California

January 29, 2023

by APPA News
January 29, 2023

Clean Power Alliance in California has issued a request for offers for the installation of solar-plus-storage installations to provide backup power during emergencies.

Specifically, the RFO for Clean Power Alliance’s Power Ready program is seeking developers qualified to build power resiliency in several Southern California communities to provide backup power to strengthen its system against the rising threats of power outages related to wildfires, public safety power shutoffs, aging infrastructure, and times of extreme heat.

Power Ready is a community benefit program offered to Clean Power Alliance’s partner communities in order to make public buildings energy resilient by installing solar-plus-storage systems.

In the initial phase, the Power Ready program will provide critical backup power systems to 12 public facilities throughout Los Angeles and Ventura counties at no cost to participating communities. To facilitate the program Clean Power Alliance has contracted with a developer-financier to build, own, and operate the systems for 20 years.

Clean Power Alliance, founded in 2017, is the fourth largest electricity provider in California. It provided 100 percent renewable energy to three million people via 1 million customer accounts in 30 cities across Los Angeles and Ventura counties, as well as the unincorporated areas of both counties.

Clean Power Alliance has been an active participant in the California market for renewable energy. In October, the community choice aggregator signed a 33-megawatt (MW) 15-year power purchase agreement with Fervo Energy for the delivery of geothermal power from a facility in Beaver County, Utah, to CPA’s 32 member communities.

In September 2021, Clean Power Alliance signed of a 15-year power purchase agreement for the Desert Quartzite Solar-plus-Storage project with EDF Renewables North America. The project, which combines a 300-MW solar project with a 600-megawatt hour battery energy storage system, is expected to begin delivering electricity to CPA customers in February 2024.

Minnesota Green Hydrogen Facility Registers Certificates on Renewable Thermal Tracking Platform

January 26, 2023

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
January 26, 2023

CenterPoint Energy, Minnesota’s largest natural gas utility, has registered a green hydrogen facility on the M-RETS renewable thermal tracking system to track renewable thermal certificates.  

CenterPoint Energy’s facility, which began operations in 2022, is the first-ever green hydrogen facility to register with a tracking system in North America and the company is receiving the nation’s first RTCs issued for green hydrogen, M-RETS said.

In an interview with Public Power Current, Ben Gerber, President and CEO of M-RETS, noted that M-RETS is a renewable energy tracking system. Along with a tracking platform for renewable thermal certificates, M-RETS also offers a renewable energy certificate tracking platform.

RTCs are a tool that represents the environmental attributes associated with renewable natural gas and other renewable thermal commodities, including green hydrogen.

CenterPoint Energy plans to retire the RTCs generated from its green hydrogen facility on behalf of its customers.

CenterPoint Energy’s green hydrogen system in Minneapolis uses renewable electricity and purified water to produce 60 dekatherms of hydrogen within a 24-hour period. The green hydrogen is added to natural gas in a portion of the utility’s local distribution pipeline system, reducing the carbon impact of the gas when burned.

M-RETS said that it created its renewable thermal tracking system in 2020 “to increase transparency, spur market development for industries that cannot be electrified, and provide the value and liquidity necessary to support renewable thermal projects.”

“With new incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act, green hydrogen-producing facilities will grow,” Gerber said in a news release related to the CenterPoint announcement. “This is an important step to establishing the market.”

When asked to elaborate on the new incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act, Gerber told Public Power Current that the law includes a provision that provides up to a $3/kilogram incentive for producing clean hydrogen, which “really starts putting it into a cost-competitive territory for decarbonizing the gas system.” Specifically, the Inflation Reduction Act includes a clean hydrogen production tax credit of up to $3 per kilogram.

Additional information about M-RETS is available here.

Public Power and Green Hydrogen

A report available to members of the American Public Power Association offers details on where the emerging hydrogen market is in the U.S. and globally, what is driving the growing interest in hydrogen and what obstacles are preventing hydrogen technology from being able to scale-up. The report is available here.

Missouri Public Utility Alliance Awarded $1.1 Million Grant for Workforce Training

January 26, 2023

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
January 26, 2023

The MPUA Resource Services Corporation has been awarded a $1.1 million American Rescue Plan Act workforce training grant from the Missouri Department of Economic Development, the Missouri Public Utility Alliance said on Jan. 25.

As a result of the grant, the MPUA Resource Services Corporation, which provides services for public power electric, wastewater, natural gas, water, and broadband utilities in Missouri and surrounding areas, will be able to offer additional vocational training in the utility field. The benefit of this funding will be a more skilled workforce and filling open positions with Missouri public power utilities, MPUA said.

The grant program was mentioned by Missouri Governor Mike Parson in his State of the State Address on Jan. 18, and the Missouri Department of Economic Development announced individual grant recipients on Jan. 24.

MPUA’s programs for utility worker training focus on the recruiting and training needs of municipal water, wastewater, natural gas, broadband and electric utilities. The training will benefit at least 150 people.

MPUA noted that public power utilities in Missouri, like much of the utility industry, are experiencing labor shortages and an aging workforce that will soon retire.

To help combat these issues, MPUA will use project funding to further advance its training to assist individuals who seek higher wages and career advancement and create a pipeline of industry professionals for municipally-owned utilities in Missouri.

Funding for Missouri’s Workforce Training Grant program comes from Missouri’s share of federal funding under ARPA.

FERC Takes Steps to Bolster Reliability Standards for Monitoring Grid Cyber Systems

January 26, 2023

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
January 26, 2023

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Jan. 19 directed the North American Electric Reliability Corporation to develop and submit reliability standards requiring internal network security monitoring for high-impact bulk electric system cyber systems and medium-impact systems with high-speed internet connections.

The final rule, Order No. 887, issued at FERC’s monthly open meeting, also directs NERC to study the risks posed by the lack of internal network security monitoring at bulk electric cyber systems that would not be addressed by the new or modified standard, and the feasibility of extending monitoring to those systems.

In issuing the directive to NERC, FERC observed that current NERC reliability standards require monitoring at a network’s electronic security perimeter, but do not require similar monitoring of anomalous activity within the network environment, which the Commission characterized as a gap in the current NERC reliability standards.

NERC has flexibility in developing the content of the new requirements, but the Commission said the new standards should address the need for entities to develop baselines of their network traffic inside the applicable networked environments and to monitor for and detect unauthorized activity, connections, devices and software inside those networked environments.

FERC said the new standards also should require entities to identify anomalous activity to a high level of confidence by logging network traffic, maintaining logs and other data and implementing measures to minimize the likelihood of an attacker removing evidence of their tactics, techniques and procedures from compromised devices.

The rule takes effect 60 days after publication in the Federal Register, and NERC has 15 months from the effective date to submit the new standards for Commission approval.  NERC has 12 months from the date of the order to submit its report on low-impact bulk electric cyber systems and medium-impact systems with no broadband access.

Order No. 887 results from a notice of proposed rulemaking issued by FERC in January 2022 proposing internal network security monitoring for all high and medium impact bulk electric system cyber systems. The NOPR also asked for comments on whether internal network security monitoring should be applied to low impact BES Cyber Systems. 

The American Public Power Association responded to the NOPR in joint comments filed with the Edison Electric Institute, the Electric Power Supply Association, the Large Public Power Council, and the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. 

The joint comments urged FERC to conduct additional information gathering on internal network security monitoring before issuing a directive.  The comments also cited the significant technological and practical challenges associated with deploying internal network security monitoring, and the Joint Associations urged FERC to limit the applicability of any internal network security monitoring directive to high impact BES cyber systems and medium impact BES cyber systems at control centers. 

APPA and the other groups also argued that use of internal network security monitoring for low impact bulk electric system cyber systems is unlikely to be practicable. 

Order No. 887 partly responds to the concerns raised by the groups, insofar as it only applies the internal network security monitoring requirement to a subset of medium impact assets, and the directive does not require internal network security monitoring for low impact assets at this time.

Peninsula Clean Energy Signs Contracts Expanding Renewable Energy, Storage Capability

January 25, 2023

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
January 25, 2023

California community choice aggregator Peninsula Clean Energy on Jan. 24 said that it has signed contracts for energy storage, geothermal, wind and small hydropower projects.

Nova III will be Peninsula Clean Energy’s first stand-alone storage project and will provide up to 50 megawatts of four-hour lithium-ion battery storage over 15 years beginning in August 2024. The project, developed by Calpine Corporation in Riverside County, California, displaces fossil fuel infrastructure as it is located on the same site and uses existing interconnection infrastructure of the former 750-MW Inland Empire gas turbine, the CCA said.

The Whitegrass No. 2 project will provide Peninsula Clean Energy with 6 megawatts of geothermal power over 20 years. Open Mountain Energy is developing the project in Lyon County, Nevada, with power coming online by the start of 2025.

The Burney Creek Hydroelectric Project will provide three megawatts of small hydroelectric power over 15 years from an existing Snow Mountain Hydro site in Shasta County, California, beginning in January 2024.

CalWind’s Wind Resource 1 began a three-year contract with Peninsula Clean Energy in January to provide nearly nine megawatts of wind power near Tehachapi in Kern County, California.

In addition to the four newly signed contracts, the Heber 2 geothermal facility began delivery in January and will provide Peninsula Clean Energy with 26 megawatts for 15 years. Peninsula Clean Energy signed the contract last year with Ormat Technologies, who developed the project in Imperial Valley, California.

The CCA said that all five projects will help Peninsula Clean Energy take important steps toward its goal of matching customer demand with 100-percent renewable power on an hourly basis 99 percent of the time by 2025.

The four newly signed contracts are the most recent to stem from a batch of 70 project proposals that Peninsula Clean Energy received from a November 2021 solicitation.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission Issues Final Rule Certifying NuScale Power’s Small Modular Reactor

January 25, 2023

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
January 25, 2023

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission recently issued a final rule to certify NuScale Power’s small modular reactor.

The company’s power module becomes the first SMR design certified by the NRC and just the seventh reactor design cleared for use in the United States.

The rule, which was published in the Federal Register, takes effects February 21, 2023.

The published final rule making allows utilities to reference NuScale’s SMR design when applying for a combined license to build and operate a reactor.

NuScale’s power plant can house up to 12 factory-built power modules that are about a third of the size of a large-scale reactor. Each power module leverages natural processes, such as convection and gravity, to passively cool the reactor without additional water, power, or even operator action.

The NRC accepted NuScale’s SMR design certification application back in March 2018 and issued its final technical review in August 2020. The NRC voted to certify the design on July 29, 2022 — making it the first SMR approved by the NRC for use in the United States.

Among the public power entities that have been pursing SMRs is Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems. The UAMPS Carbon Free Power Project is a nuclear plant to be located at the Idaho National Laboratory near Idaho Falls Idaho. It will comprise of up to six NuScale Power Modules.

TVA Enters Agreement With GE Hitachi Related To Potential Deployment Of Small Modular Reactor

Meanwhile, the Tennessee Valley Authority in 2022 entered a two-party agreement with GE Hitachi to support TVA’s planning and preliminary licensing for a potential deployment of a BWRX-300 small modular reactor at the Clinch River Nuclear site and provide additional information needed as TVA continues to analyze the viability of SMRs, subject to future TVA board approval.

This follows an April 2022 collaboration agreement with Ontario Power Generation to support the development of small modular reactors as an effective long-term source of 24/7 carbon-free energy in both Canada and the U.S.

Nebraska Public Power District Launches Siting Study for Small Modular Reactors

Nebraska Public Power District is beginning the process of studying sites that could have the potential to host advanced small modular nuclear reactors, it said on Jan. 13.

The first phase of the siting study involves doing a Nebraska-wide assessment to determine the 15 best locations for siting small modular reactors based on geographic data and preliminary licensing criteria. Some of the key criteria being considered will be access to water and transmission lines among many others. This phase is estimated to be completed in spring of 2023.

The second phase of the study will perform a more in-depth evaluation and will focus on reducing the number of sites from 15 to four. This effort includes detailed field environmental and constructability evaluations based on criteria used by the NRC when licensing nuclear plants. This phase of the study is estimated to take approximately a year to complete.

DOE Encourages Southeast Hydrogen Hub to Submit Full Application for Federal Funding

January 24, 2023

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
January 24, 2023

The Southeast Hydrogen Hub coalition, which includes the Tennessee Valley Authority, on Jan. 19, announced that it is among the limited number of organizations encouraged by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to submit a full application in response to the $8 billion in funding for regional clean hydrogen hubs under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

The coalition, as well as Battelle, is working to organize the potential hub and secure funding. After submitting an initial concept paper in November, the coalition received the DOE notification of encouragement on December 27, 2022.

Of the 79 concept papers the DOE received, 33 were encouraged to advance to the application stage. Formal proposals are due to the DOE in April 2023, with decisions expected in the fall.

A hydrogen hub in the Southeastern U.S. is expected to bring robust economic development benefits and jobs to the region, TVA and other utility members of the coalition noted.

“Hydrogen is attractive as an energy resource because it has immediate potential to accelerate decarbonization in the Southeast and across all sectors of the U.S. economy – including transportation, which generates the largest share of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the country,” they said.

The coalition’s concept paper described how the Southeast Hydrogen Hub would build on existing infrastructure utilizing technologies to advance the production, storage, transport, and delivery of hydrogen to transition the energy economy toward a decarbonized future.

Other members of the coalition include investor-owned utilities Dominion Energy, Duke Energy, Louisville Gas, and Electric Company and Kentucky Utilities Company and Southern Company.

Lower Colorado River Authority to Build Peaker Plant in Texas

January 24, 2023

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
January 24, 2023

The Lower Colorado River Authority on Jan. 24 said that it will build a new peaker power plant in Central Texas to provide an additional 190 megawatts of dispatchable power to the Texas power grid.

The natural gas-fired plant is expected to be operational in 2025. A peaker plant is one that typically is used for brief periods during times when the demand for power approaches or surpasses the amount of power available, LCRA noted.

As dispatchable power, the plant will be available to grid operators to call upon when renewable and other thermal generation are not sufficient to meet the state’s demand for electricity. The new LCRA plant will be able to ramp up and shut down in minutes.

The new plant will include 10 high-efficiency Wärtsilä reciprocating engines. Each engine can provide about 19 megawatts of power.

The new plant will be LCRA’s second peaker plant. The first is a 184-megawatt natural gas-fired facility in Fayette County that was built in 2010.

LCRA praised the Public Utility Commission of Texas and the Texas Legislature “in their efforts to increase the supply of electricity available to Texans and to promote the wholesale market signals necessary to make an investment like this possible.” Regulatory certainty is important for LCRA and others to commit to invest in new dispatchable power generation, it said.